Book Discussion on Patrick J. Deneen’s Why Liberalism Failed

December 23, 2025 Reading Group

Participants: Bon to Run, Mimi, Mori, Maruchi

Written by: Bon to Run

Book Title: Why Liberalism Failed

WHY LIBERALISM FAILED?

It would not be much of an overstatement to call the 20th century a great historical whirlpool of world wars and the Cold War, generated by the clash of ideologies such as communism, fascism, and liberalism. With the defeat of Nazi Germany and the collapse of the Soviet Union, the rough and murky currents produced by a century of ideological conflict merged into the great wave of liberalism. Riding that tide at the right moment and swiftly raising their sails, South Korea and Taiwan escaped poverty and dictatorship and joined the ranks of advanced countries that successfully achieved economic prosperity and citizens’ political freedom in the 21st century.

Yet the more dazzling the success, the darker the shadow behind it. In the 21st century, the side effects of achievements based on liberalism have emerged especially in Western societies in the form of the breakdown of community and extreme polarization. Criticism has gone beyond pointing out the limits and contradictions of liberal ideology; some have even come to define liberalism as evil and call for its abolition.

In this context, through the provocative title Failed, the author argues that liberalism is an ideology bound to fail because of its inherent errors or limitations, and he explores why it must fail and what alternatives there might be.

1. Unsustainable Liberalism

Deneen argues that liberalism is an ideology derived from individualism based on voluntarism (placing will and emotion above intellect) and on the assumption that human beings are separate from and in opposition to nature. He claims that these two characteristics function as liberalism’s innate errors and create the limits that make liberalism unsustainable.

This individualism, grounded in voluntarist liberalism, stimulates and amplifies social desire and the lust for power, and in order to satisfy these expanded desires, liberal civilization cannot help but continually destroy and exploit nature. In the end, the liberal project is self-contradictory: the more it emphasizes individual autonomy, the more it must result in the depletion of both the moral resources and material resources on which it is founded.

2. The Integration of Individualism and Statism

Liberalism is a philosophy that seeks to liberate human beings, once constrained by custom and status, into autonomous individuals by emphasizing individual choice and autonomy through the ideal of freedom. Inevitably, liberalism is inseparable from individualism, and the more successful liberalism becomes, the more individual freedom is maximized.

However, the stronger individualism becomes, the stronger statism must also become. As Tocqueville understood, the individual’s desire for liberation leads to countless clashes and disputes with the desires of other individuals, and these can be controlled and resolved only through a power above the universal individual—that is, through the existence of the state.

Ultimately, the expansion of liberalism depends on an increasingly entrenched vicious cycle: the expansion of the state guarantees the goal of atomizing individuals, and as a result, the state expands again to control a society without shared norms, practices, or beliefs. As freedom expands, more legal and administrative restrictions are required, and the state degenerates into something like a prison.

3. Liberalism as Anticulture

If liberalism is a project to liberate the individual from all supra-individual authority, then the more liberalism expands, the more the normative and restrictive functions of existing customs and culture are regarded as obstacles to freedom. Liberalism therefore takes on the character of an anticulture.

This liberal anticulture appears in two forms: first, informal norms that were once widely observed are treated as oppression, abolished, and then standardized into law; second, a monoculture produced by a single, homogeneous market emerges. In short, this is the advent of liberal law and the market.

However, a stage of freedom based on anticulture loses the compass of tradition, a hallmark of long-standing culture, and over time becomes a place that binds us and threatens our survival. Society increasingly turns into a collection of fragmented, normless individuals whose only aim is the irresponsible satisfaction of desire. As a result, the communal bonds once connected by the non-regulatory value of tradition are replaced by the constraints of government supervision and punishment, and the sphere of freedom once enjoyed responsibly is instead reduced.

4. Technology, the Loss of Freedom, and the Disappearance of the Liberal Arts

From ancient Greece through the Middle Ages, freedom meant something closer to self-restraint—the ability to control one’s inner desires. A free person, therefore, was one who had become free from inner desire through self-control, and this state constituted the establishment of subjecthood. Today, however, freedom means the exact opposite. Inner desire is no longer something to be controlled but something to be realized, and freedom means a condition in which the realization of those desires is not obstructed. Thus, in order to expand individual freedom, the constraints of nature inevitably had to be overcome, and technology and STEM education became important tools for expanding individual freedom.

Yet Deneen points out that the more technology advances, the more individuals become dependent and vulnerable to control. Just as we have become almost addicted to the smartphones in our hands and to social media, technology appears to expand individual autonomy, but in reality it subordinates individuals to systems, restricts free choice, and leaves them no option but to live as mere consumers. At the same time, higher education, too, has shifted away from the liberal arts—once understood as a humanistic education for becoming a free citizen—and instead emphasizes STEM education centered on technology, performance, and achievement. As a result, it focuses on training competent specialists rather than responsible individuals, and in so doing has actually contributed to the collapse of the human and cultural foundations most essential to preserving freedom.

5. A New Aristocracy and the Degeneration of Citizenship

The enormous prosperity created by 21st-century liberalism has indeed lifted many people out of absolute poverty, but it is also cited as a major cause of extreme polarization and one of the main reasons our society has produced new terms such as spoon theory, which did not exist in the past.

Deneen argues that the nature of liberalism inevitably gives rise to and entrenches a new status system. Liberal norms foster a globally homogeneous class of high-income, highly educated professional elites, and in a process characterized by careerism and credential-building, a small number of winners monopolize economic privilege. One might argue, of course, that this is the result of merit and ability, but in reality it cannot help but operate in ways favorable to certain classes depending on parents’ economic power and social status. The new class that thus emerges—the liberal ruling class, or “liberalocracy”—is reproduced across generations and comes to enjoy the unofficial status of a new aristocracy.

At the same time, this new aristocracy disguised as meritocracy becomes obsessed with private gain and economic efficiency, encourages the weakening of public responsibility and communal consciousness among the masses, and fosters cynicism toward institutions. As a result, citizenship degenerates into a merely formal set of rights, and the political apathy thereby produced leads to the devastation of democracy.

6. Conclusion: Has Liberalism Really Failed?

Deneen says that the more liberalism succeeds, the more it is bound to fail. The more individual freedom is maximized, the more tradition, family, and community collapse, while state power grows stronger, and as a result we are bound to become more unhappy. He presents the reason liberalism must fail as an error inherent in liberalism itself, one that stems from a distortion in the meaning of freedom. From ancient Greece onward, for a long time, freedom meant the ability to govern oneself by using the noble capacities of reason and spirit acquired through a long process of learning. But the moment liberal philosophy defined freedom as a state liberated from the constraints of custom and nature, a fundamental defect arose.

Accordingly, he proposes post-liberal practices as the solution: strengthening the humanities, including the liberal arts, which once formed the education of free citizens; preserving practices that sustain diverse cultures within communities; and promoting household economy and life in the polis as a kind of self-governing unit.

However, many questions follow both Deneen’s argument and the grounds he offers for it.

The freedom of ancient Greece and the Middle Ages that he presents as an ideal model was a symbol of privilege enjoyed only by a small elite, and we know well the discrimination and suffering endured by women, the elderly, slaves, and people of color, who made up the majority of the population before modern liberal individualism gained broad acceptance. Even the liberal arts, which he emphasizes as a remedy for the harms of liberalism, were closer to a ruling ethic for the governing class through the cultivation of personal virtue. Likewise, STEM—science, technology, engineering, and mathematics—which he identifies as both the learning of slaves in the past and a major contributor to the harms of liberalism today, has in fact been a key factor in making stable prosperity possible by overcoming hunger and disease, which humanity had accepted as fate for tens of thousands of years. Nor can it be denied that broad material prosperity and technological advancement are among the most important factors in the happiness and security of individuals and families.

Moreover, the grounds Deneen presents for why liberalism is bound to fail were, conversely, also conditions for its success. Since the 17th century, civilization has been able to exchange diverse forms of knowledge dispersed among individuals through the exchange mechanism of the market, and thus develop exponentially. In short, once individualism and the market were combined, only two centuries were needed to achieve development surpassing all previous eras. And as Acemoglu showed in Why Nations Fail, the establishment of the rule of law through a certain degree of centralized state power is in fact one of the most important elements in further strengthening liberalism.

As Deneen points out, liberalism began as an effort to free human beings from the constraints of custom and status, and in a short time it did dismantle existing customs and traditions, causing enormous confusion. But must we fully agree with Deneen’s claim that this amounts to the failure of liberalism? Through comparison with the North Korean system, we can tangibly feel that prosperity and equality can be enjoyed only through freedom, and that this is the true value of liberalism. Therefore, what is urgent for us is the introduction of a sound civic ethic for the proper operation of liberalism.

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Original title: 패트릭 J. 드닌 저 <왜 자유주의는 실패했는가> 독서토론

Author: Jayujuui Ipmun Dokseo Toron Moim

Date: 2025-12-26

Source: https://www.cfe.org/bbs/bbsDetail.php?cid=reading01&pn=1&idx=28446